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Bring Tennessee Forums to your community for tough education issues

ASNE has launched the Tennessee Tough Issues Forums to help communities use news literacy tools and technology to engage with education issues. This project is being managed by State Coordinator Joe Woolley.
Communities interested in hosting a forum are invited to contact Woolley at jwoolley@asne.org or615-585-0743.

ASNE has launched the Tennessee Tough Issues Forums to help local communities use the tools of news literacy to better understand often complex education reform issues, including Common Core State Standards, teacher assessments, charter schools and workforce-development challenges facing the state's young people.

The two-year project is being managed by ASNE's recently appointed State Coordinator Joe Woolley who comes on board after two years of experience in the education reform arena and four years of experience in journalism.

"Education is too important of an issue to be using cherry-picked figures or outright propaganda as facts to shape the debate," Woolley said. "We need to all know and trust the information we are using to frame the debate, and this program will help us separate fact and fiction."

"In today's world, most of us need to be our own informed editors as we sort through all the news and information coming at us from social media and legacy news sources," said ASNE President Chris Peck, associate editor of The Riverton (Wyo.) Ranger and former editor of The Memphis Commercial Appeal from 2002 to 2013. "The Tennessee Tough Issues Forums will help communities learn how to become well informed and more knowledgeable about important education-related topics."

The project is in partnership with The News Literacy Project, the American Press Institute and The Poynter Institute.

For each forum, the project will seek a local media partner, an educational partner and a community partner to help organize and build support for the local forums and follow-up discussions and events.

A local news literacy ambassador will be identified and trained in each community that hosts a forum. This news literacy ambassador can provide ongoing support for building news literacy capacity in communities.